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Intel was all over the X-Games (Photo Credit: X-Games)

You may have noticed this weekend that was all over the X-Games. You couldn’t turn on the TV, web video or without seeing the company on and around the X-Games. Intel’s love affair with sports started when Brian Krzanich took the reigns as Intel’s CEO and has been amplified at nearly corporate event since. Krzanich has had a BMX bike soar over his head a few times at CES which to me is a physical embodiment of just how committed Intel's CEO is to changing the company's perception. At this year’s CES, Intel devoted a lot of time to their latest technologies and how they enable four key experience areas: sports, health and wellness, creativity and what they’re calling the “human experience”. In fact, Intel has been spending these past few CESs and IDFs (Intel Developer Show) showing how the company is diversifying its computing capabilities and platforms beyond just PC. What we're seeing at Intel is part brand campaign to improve its perception amongst millennials, but ultimately to get younger developers to choose Intel for their IoT projects without hurting their brand in PCs and datacenter.

IoT: making up for mobile

As Intel has said on numerous occasions, they “missed” the mobile market entry window and have been over-investing ever since. They don’t want to miss the window on IoT. Even though most all of Intel’s profits comes from their datacenter and PC chip and platform franchises, the company is making major investments in its IoT (internet of things) offerings which as end points include the company’s low power Curie modules with Quark processors inside. Intel drove these processors into many big-brand fitness and sports applications as modules and or wearables that allow athletes to gather more information about their exercise and to improve using big-data analytics. Now let me talk about what Intel is doing.

X-Games

At CES 2016, Intel showed off some interesting new technologies as well as major announcements. One of the biggest announcements Intel made at CES was the partnership with the X-Games which just happened this past weekend. At the X-Games, Intel helped measure real-time data of Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle and Men’s Snowboard Big Air events, giving unique real-time data with Curie modules measuring things like speed, air time and height. This gives both the riders and the viewers more data than ever before and make the X-Games experience more modern and data-driven than ever before. Oh, and every time you saw the real-time stats, you saw that it was brought to you by Intel.

Intel's Curie module on an X-Games board (Photo credit: Intel)

In addition to the X-Games partnership, Intel also announced a new partnership with Red Bull Media House. This relationship should help Red Bull and all of their various sponsored athletes the ability to collect tons of valuable data about their performance. And because Red Bull Media Group is one of the leaders in implementing new technologies in sports, it is not much of a stretch to see them using Curie technology in ways that enhance the viewing experience as well. Imagine a space-walk in virtual reality. That would be cool.